


Intrusion

by crysothemis



Category: Stargate: Atlantis
Genre: Bodyswap, Consent Issues, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-18
Updated: 2009-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crysothemis/pseuds/crysothemis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was not the kind of morning after John had been hoping for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intrusion

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Deals with issues of consent and violation of privacy, but contains no nonconsensual sex.  
> Challenge: For my cliche_bingo square, "Bodyswap/Bodyshare"  
> Thanks: To tex, wpadmirer, lamardeuse, and sheafrotherdon for beta and meta-beta

There was a warm body curled against him, a head resting on his shoulder. John opened his eyes slowly, but God, it was real. Rodney was here in bed with him and they'd . . . John took a slow breath.

No, he hadn't dreamed that part either. They'd had sex, here on this narrow Baleekan sleeping palette, and with all the places they'd slept offworld, you'd think they could have chosen somewhere with a comfortable bed for their first time.

But no. No, of course it had ended up like this, five years after John had started wanting, three years after he'd given up hoping. Of course it had happened when they were on a new planet, off guard and buzzed on fermented carrot juice, or whatever the hell that stuff had been.

And maybe he'd never imagined Rodney would turn to him and say, "God, I'm incredibly horny. I don't suppose you'd ever consider . . ." But he'd damn well found his voice in time to say, "Sure, what the hell?" and they'd ended up here, in the room the Baleek hosteler had assigned to him, pulling off their clothes as fast as their alcohol-fumbled fingers could manage.

Rodney shifted in his sleep, muttering something against John's shoulder, and John turned toward him, just a little. Rodney's hair was damp against his skin, soft and wispy, and there was something so familiar and yet so utterly unexpected about it that John's breath caught in his throat.

He had no idea if Rodney would ever want to do this again, but he'd wanted it once, and that had to count for something. John twisted a little further, easing Rodney down off his shoulder so that he could find Rodney's mouth with his own. It was just a brush of lips against lips, but Rodney woke instantly, far more quickly than John had expected. His eyes stared up into John's, and then he slid away and sat up smoothly, looking at John with his mouth half open.

"John? What are we . . . what am I doing here?"

Well, fuck. John flopped his head back on the lumpy excuse for a pillow and looked up at the low-beamed ceiling. "Okay, look, it's not a big deal, right?" He pushed himself up to sitting, his heart thumping against his ribs. Rodney was looking down at himself like he couldn't believe he was naked.

"It was probably something in that damned carrot juice," John said, even though he hadn't been that drunk. Apparently Rodney had been, and wow, he really should have noticed that.

"The Baleek call it Ruivut," Rodney said, examining his hands with a face gone strangely pale. "And I have never heard of it having an effect such as this."

"Well, maybe you shouldn't have drunk so much," John said, and crap, so much for afterglow. He should have known it was too much to ask for. He should have known Rodney would never look at him sober. Hell, he had known. For three long years he'd known. But all it had taken was one stupid, drunken proposition, and he'd forgotten all about Rodney's long string of exes. Well, okay, two wasn't exactly a string, but it was long to John, who had exactly one and a hell of a lot of regrets.

"I drank a single cup," Rodney said. He rolled one shoulder back and then grimaced like it hurt. "I do not believe it was enough to impair my faculties."

"Fine," John said. "Whatever. We made a mistake. I'll get out of your hair, and we'll never mention it again." He flung the sheets off -- it wasn't like Rodney hadn't already seen everything there was to see -- and rolled up onto the balls of his feet to stand.

"John--" Rodney said, and reached to touch his arm. John froze, looking down at Rodney's hand. But then Rodney pulled it back to touch his own face, and then his hair, with increasing urgency.

"Oh. Oh, my," he said. "It is not just . . . you think I am Rodney."

"Well, who the hell else would I-- Oh, crap." It wasn't Rodney. He was seeing things that weren't real, like a Replicator-induced dream. Or else, fuck. Fuck. It was one of those damn bodyswap devices, like the one that had switched Keller out for that petty thief.

"John, it's me," not-Rodney said. "Teyla."

"Fucking hell," John said, and grabbed for the sheet. He could feel his heart in his throat and his stomach had gone queasy and fuck it all, he'd been half-hard until ten seconds ago.

And Teyla had seen it all.

"It is all right," Teyla said, averting Rodney's eyes, and Jesus, yes, he could hear it now. It was Rodney's voice, but it didn't sound like him at all.

"Um," John said, the sweat gone cold on the back of his neck. "This isn't what it looks like." Even though it was what it looked like. Exactly what it looked like, and now Teyla knew he'd had a one-night drunken fling with Rodney, and he'd never felt so exposed in his life.

"I am sorry," Teyla said, and it was easier to hear her as Teyla when she wasn't looking at him with Rodney's wide, blue eyes. "I would not knowingly have done this to you."

John closed his eyes for a moment, willing his skin to stop crawling. It wasn't like Teyla hadn't seen him in bed before. Hell, she'd seen him with half his clothes off plenty of times in the infirmary. Only it wasn't the same, it wasn't anything like the same, and damn it, he'd kissed her. Hell, he'd kissed her gently, and Teyla was a lot more perceptive than Rodney was. She'd know how he-- She knew.

"Crap," John said, and a sudden, awful thought occurred to him. "Please tell me it wasn't you last night."

"No," Teyla said. "No, of course not. I would never do such a thing. Surely you know that." And she turned her head so that he could see her -- Rodney's -- profile, tight and worried.

The thing was, he did know. But it helped, just a little, to hear it. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."

"I am glad," she said.

"We have to find Rodney," John said, reaching for his clothes.

"Yes," Teyla said, and her Rodney-eyes went wide again. "Because if I am in his body, then it seems very likely that he is in mine."

The boxers were still inside John's pants, so he turned his back and yanked them both on, then grabbed Rodney's. "Here," he said, shoving them at Teyla. "You can't go out like that."

"I was not planning to," she said dryly.

Teyla dressed Rodney's body, fumbling a little with the buttons, unused to the size of her hands. It hurt to watch her, hurt to see Rodney as not-Rodney, even though it was Teyla and he trusted her. He'd just never wanted to have to trust her with something like this.

"You can't tell anyone," he blurted, just as Teyla finished tying Rodney's shoes. "It could screw up my job."

"I know," she said quietly. "I am aware of the rules of your military."

"Right." Of course she was. Teyla knew stuff like that, just like she knew how to use Earth computers and operate the systems on the Daedalus. Quiet but intensive study was how she coped with things that were foreign to her, and John was so damned grateful he wanted to kiss her. Only not while she was still in Rodney's body. Jesus. Once was freaky enough. "Um, thanks," John said.

Teyla was stretching, frowning as Rodney's joints popped. "Rodney will most likely be in my quarters," she said, but when John opened the door, he wasn't. Or, at least, whoever was in Teyla's body was right there in the corridor, staring at them like they were three-headed aliens.

"Oh, God," Teyla's body said. "It's real. I was hoping maybe I was hallucinating or something, but it's never something convenient like that, is it? You know, Jennifer told me this was unsettling, but let me tell you, hearing about it is nothing like the actual experience. And you'd think I'd enjoy having a hot female body, but you would not believe what a pain it is to take a leak like this."

"Rodney," Teyla said, staring at her body like she was trying to make sure it was unharmed. She reached a hand up as if to touch, but let let it drop before she made contact. "We must find a way to reverse this."

"Yes, yes," Rodney said, and whoa, that sounded bizarre in Teyla's voice. "I'm thinking. I need coffee."

But Teyla crossed Rodney's arms and frowned. "I would prefer that you did not."

Rodney stared. "What?"

"You are in my body," Teyla said. "And your coffee makes me feel . . . unpleasant."

"But you're not in your body," Rodney said. "And I am."

"Nevertheless," Teyla said. "It is my body, and I intend to occupy it again."

Rodney scowled, which looked bizarre on Teyla's face, but didn't argue. "Fine. Let's concentrate on that, shall we? But when I get my body back, I'm having at least four cups."

"I'll make them for you myself," John said. "Now get to work and figure out how to fix this."

Rodney tapped a finger to his nose. "It happened when we were asleep, so the first place to look is in the rooms where we were sleeping. I, of course, was here with, ah . . ." And he glanced at Teyla and his eyes went wide.

"She already knows," John said. "She woke up in my bed."

"Oh," Rodney said, and his face fell.

John's stomach lurched. Not that he'd expected anything, but damn it, he'd already been through this once. The last thing he needed was another round of rejection to complete his crappy morning.

"Did you, um, that is, did she . . ." Rodney started, and then looked flustered, shifting awkwardly on Teyla's legs like he wanted to be anywhere but here.

"I have already promised John I will not tell anyone," Teyla said. "I only wish there were some way to erase what has happened. I would not have done this to you -- to either of you -- for all the world."

"Right," Rodney said with a purse of Teyla's lips. "Well, it's not like any of us had much choice in the matter, is it?"

"Damn straight we didn't," John said, and led the way back to his bedroom. It still smelled of sex, but Teyla ignored it and Rodney went straight to the sleeping palette and started searching under and around it. His movements in Teyla's body were quick and stuttered, like he was constantly misjudging his reach.

When a few minutes' search turned up nothing, Rodney dug into his pack for a scanner, then muttered something decidedly un-Teyla-like when it wouldn't turn on.

"Here," he said, shoving it at John. "I put it in safe-mode. It needs to be reactivated by a gene carrier."

"Right," John said, and turned the scanner on before handing it back. But a thorough scanning of the room turned up nothing, and Rodney eventually had to admit defeat.

Ronon met up with them on their way to Teyla's room, and he stared, one eyebrow cocked, as Rodney and Teyla passed him.

"What's wrong with them?" he asked as he turned to follow John.

"Switched bodies," John said. "Like the thing that happened to Keller last year."

"You mean she's him and he's her?"

"'Fraid so," John said, watching as Rodney-in-Teyla's-body searched the room just as thoroughly as he had John's.

"That sucks," Ronon said.

"Tell me about it."

"There is just nothing here," Rodney said, poking at the scanner's screen one more time. But then the scanner beeped and Rodney's head snapped up. "Wait, what's this?" And he pointed to Teyla's vest, slung neatly over a chair in the corner. Apparently he hadn't bothered to put on when he'd gotten up, and wow, the idea of Rodney dressing Teyla's body was just . . . wrong.

"There is nothing but . . . oh," Teyla said, and reached into a vest pocket to pull out a small, oblong object on a chain. It looked like blue glass, inlaid with a pretty silver pattern. "Do you think this might be it?"

"It's definitely giving off an energy reading," Rodney said. "Wait, you showed me this. In the market yesterday."

"It was sold to me by a Vormissian trader," Teyla said. "She thought it a pretty trinket."

Rodney took the pendant from Teyla, holding it carefully by the chain. "I must have touched it when you showed it to me," he said, staring at the scanner. "It seems to be . . . ahah. Definitely Ancient design, and it's gene-activated, so it was inert until I touched it." He frowned and poked at the scanner a few times. "Hmmm. It appears to be a similar sort of communication device, but with a single source node and a delay before activation. But I believe I can . . . oh, right. Need the gene." He held the pendant up to Teyla. "Press it here and here," he said, pointing to two parts of the design.

Teyla lifted an eyebrow, but reached to touch the pendant with Rodney's hands. For a moment nothing happened, and then Rodney staggered, dropping the pendant and grabbing for the bedpost, just as Teyla-in-Rodney's body crumpled to the floor.

John lunged and managed to catch Rodney's body just before it hit, cushioning his head from the fall. But the pendant lay shattered on the floor.

"Fuck," John said, but then Teyla's body straightened and said, "It is all right, John."

A moment later, Rodney's eyes fluttered open, and John knew it was him before he even said a word.

"Wha--?" Rodney said, staring up into John's face, and it was so good to see Rodney in his own body again that John couldn't help squeezing his shoulder. "Oh," Rodney said, and John was suddenly aware of the weight of Rodney's head resting on his thigh. "Yes, this is much better."

"I agree," Teyla said.

"Well," Rodney said, and sat up. John tried not to miss the warmth of his body and pretty much failed. "Perhaps we should all be a little more careful about what we touch."

"I cannot say I am sorry it is broken," Teyla said. "That was . . . most unpleasant."

"Good riddance," Ronon muttered.

"Well, it's a loss to science," Rodney said, "but I can't say I'll miss it, either." He turned to Teyla. "You should know that, ah, I didn't . . . I mean, I did have to take a leak, but I want you to know I tried not to look. Or, you know, do anything. Well, nothing I didn't have to, it was just--"

"Rodney," Teyla said. "I understand. We have both been . . . intruded upon, and while there was no intention of harm, there are still consequences, and we must now live with them. But I appreciate your concern. It means a great deal to me." She dusted her hands on her hips. "Now, Ronon, perhaps you will join me downstairs in search of breakfast."

Ronon looked from Teyla to John and then back to Teyla again. "What?"

"I find this experience has made me quite hungry," Teyla said.

Ronon frowned. "What about them?"

"I believe they will come later," Teyla said, and John winced and tried to catch her eye, because the last thing he wanted to have to cope with was being alone with Rodney right now. But Teyla was manhandling Ronon out the door, and it was going to look damn awkward if he chased after her.

"Um," John said in the ensuing silence. "You hungry?"

Rodney looked as uncomfortable as John felt. "Actually, yes."

"Okay," John said, but at the same time, Rodney said, "You two didn't actually . . . uh, did you?"

"Didn't what?"

"You know," Rodney said, waving his hands. "Do anything. When you woke up in bed together. Naked."

John pressed his lips together, wishing he could say no. "Look, I'm sorry. I thought she was you, okay?"

"Oh, God," Rodney said, like he thought--

"I just kissed her," John said quickly. "You were-- I mean, she was just waking up, and I didn't know you were her. Or she was you."

"Oh," Rodney said in a small voice. "I see." He looked down at his feet. "Was she, um . . ."

"She's Teyla," John said, because he'd already said he was sorry, and he didn't know what else to do. "It happened, we figured out what was going on, we apologized. End of story."

"I see," Rodney said again, then finally looked up. "So was she, ah, better than me? At kissing, I mean, because if she was half-awake, she probably assumed you were Kanaan, and I'm sure she's quite . . . I mean, not that I'm a bad kisser, obviously, I just, well, I really didn't get much of a chance to prove myself last night, between the--" He waved a hand. "And the-- and anyway, it's not fair to compare us, because I never asked her to be in my body."

"Jesus, McKay," John said, and leave it to Rodney to worry about something like that. "It wasn't that kind of a kiss. As soon as I touched her, she woke up and figured it out."

"Oh," Rodney said, but he looked a little less miserable.

"For the record," John said, "I wouldn't have compared you, anyway. It was just weird to find out I was kissing her instead of you."

"Right," Rodney said, and met John's eyes. "I . . . look, I'm sorry, okay? I know I shouldn't have stayed. In my defense, it was late and we'd been drinking and, well, okay, actually I always fall asleep after amazing sex, but I just want you to know that if we ever do this again, I promise I'll stay awake long enough to get back to my own room."

John felt his ears go warm, because Rodney had said amazing sex, and he was talking about doing it again and that was just-- "Hey," he said. "It's not like you knew you were going to get bodyswapped."

"No, well, you never do," Rodney said. "That's the trouble with it."

"At least it was Teyla," John said, although some part of him wished it hadn't been, wished she didn't know him so intimately, now.

"Yes, fine, it could have been much worse," Rodney said. "That doesn't mean it was pleasant."

"Never said it was," John said. "It wasn't exactly fun for me, either."

"I see," Rodney said, and peered at him closely. "Wait, really? Because, well, obviously she was in my body, but it's not like kissing Teyla would be a hardship. She's not exactly hard on the--"

"What if I'd done more than kiss?" John said, the words coming tight and hard. "What if she'd been half-asleep and assumed I was Kanaan and let me keep going? How the hell do you think I'd live with that?"

"Oh," Rodney said. "Oh, wow. I hadn't actually . . . that's seriously disturbing."

"Yeah," John said, and somehow it helped that Rodney got it. "Yeah, it is."

"But it's okay," Rodney said. "She didn't, and you didn't, so it's okay."

She saw me naked, John wanted to say. She knows things about me I wasn't even ready to tell you. But none of that would say what he meant, the deep sense of wrongness he still felt. He was pretty sure Teyla was feeling it, too, twice over.

"We should go get breakfast," John said.

"We should," Rodney agreed, and John turned to go, only to find that Rodney wasn't with him. Rodney was still right where he'd been standing, shifting on his feet and looking uncomfortable.

"So I guess this means we're . . . ah, that is, you wouldn't be interested in . . . not that I'd expect that you'd want a repeat performance, not after what happened, because obviously it would only serve as an unpleasant reminder of things that are really best forgotten, so we shouldn't--"

"Nah," John said, leaning against the doorway so he could be all cool and casual. "I'd be up for it. If you were."

"Oh," Rodney said. "Really? Wow. I mean, well, obviously I . . . actually, I can't believe I didn't even know you do men. How did I not know that? But clearly that was not your first time, unless there's some other reason you know how to completely suppress your gag reflex, and how the hell do you do that, anyway?"

John couldn't help smiling, feeling suddenly lighter than he had since he'd woken up. "Just takes a little concentration," he said. "I'll teach you sometime, if you want."

"Ah," Rodney said, his cheeks gone pink. "Yes. I would . . . yes. I think I'd like that."

"Cool," John said, and he was grinning like an idiot, but he didn't care, because Rodney was grinning back at him, and it was okay. It was really going to be okay. "So, uh, I think I owe you some coffee."

"You do?" Rodney said. "Oh, yes, you do. Wait, do they actually have coffee here? Because if the rotgut they served last night is any indication, they're not too picky about beverages on this planet."

"I've got two MREs," John said. "I always try to pick the ones with Accessory Packet A."

"Oh my God. I think I love you." And John had two seconds to bask in it before Rodney's brain caught up with his mouth. "I mean, not that I, that is, well, of course we've been friends for quite some time now, and you did once say, you know, as a friend loves another--"

"Rodney," John said fondly, "shut up."

Rodney's chin jerked up. "Wait, you mean I'm allowed to say it? I don't have to censor myself? Because, well, I suppose you already know this, but sometimes I have been known to, ah, speak a bit impetuously at times, and I realize that this can be a bit of a sticking point in a relationship, and I really, really don't want to ruin this thing before we've even had a chance to--"

"You can say anything you damn well please," John said. "As long as you're not telling me you're Teyla."

Rodney's smile was quick and sweet and a little pained. "No, I'm most definitely me."

"Good," John said with feeling. "Now, let's go get you that coffee."


End file.
